1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a Personal Call and Feature Control (Personal-CFC) system and method for controlling telephones, for providing extended global features for telephones and for routing of media-rich telephone calls between telephones and multimedia equipment.
2. Background Information
A PBX (private branch exchange) is a telephone exchange which is dedicated to an individual company (or other organization), and is located on the company site. The function of the PBX is to transfer calls from a service provider (SP) into one of the many telephones within the company and from one of the many telephones within the company into the service provider. Because of the many interconnections involved, the PBX usually includes racks of bulky and expensive electronic equipment, which is usually capitalized.
Management for PBXs is performed by skilled technicians in the Company's Information Technology department. For that reason, personalization of features and end user management can be kept to a minimum (e.g., greetings message only). Telephones are considered physical extensions of the PBX to different location in the company. As a result, users are assigned (attached) to their own telephone.
A telephone can be customized with several features, such as, for example, speed dialing of personalized telephone numbers, voice dialing, redialing, and the like.
The telephone contains a basic feature set (BFS) that contains the rudimentary features needed for each endpoint. For example, a telephone endpoint can have 12 buttons (0-9, *, #) for data input. A PC terminal can have prompts such as “Start Video” and “Stop Video”.
The telephone can also contain an enhanced feature set (EFS). Several examples include: speed dialing, voice dialing, voice announcement, call transfer, and the like. A person owning or using several different telephones will ordinarily use several different telephones and these will generally have correspondingly different values of EFS, considering the diverse technologies and software used to fabricate and control the different telephones. The telephone can also contain a multi-media feature set (MFS). A Feature Set (FS) is herein defined as one of the above sets: BFS, EFS or MFS, depending on the context used.
An “endpoint” will be defined herein as a device that provides capabilities for generating and/or terminating information streams. There are several types of endpoints. For example, a traditional telephone is used to terminate a voice media stream. Also, a combination of computer software and computer screen PC endpoint can be used to terminate a video and audio mixed media stream.
In the following, the word “telephone” or “phone” will be used in its most general sense, and can include, for example, a home telephone, an office telephone, a conference telephone, a cell phone, a Personal Data Assistant (PDA), a videophone, and the like.
Telephones with different capabilities or features can be provided in one company that is served by one PBX (e.g., basic-phone, executive-phone, conference-phone, and the like.). All these telephones provide different user interfaces. Also, due to the limited telephone interface, some features can be assigned to different buttons by different users. Therefore, using different telephones might provide a challenge to the end user. In addition, some telephones may not be capable of being easily upgraded with different features (e.g., video capability).
A service provider can include POTS, VoIP provider or Centrex system or the like.
In FIG. 1, service providers 120 (which can include Provider A, Provider B, . . . , and Provider N.) are connected to several telephones, including Phone A 150, Phone B 152, Phone C 154, . . . Phone N 158. These telephones can have different characteristics. For example, Phone A includes an extended feature set EFS A 170, Phone B includes a Basic Feature Set, BFS B 172, Phone C includes a Multimedia feature set, MFS C 174, and Phone N includes an extended feature set EFS 178. For example, a call from service provider 120 to Phone A will pass though EFS A 170, which has customized settings for controlling Phone A 150.
An End User 160 can be a person that is assigned to a particular telephone and that receives telephone services. End User 160 can activate any of the telephones such as Phone A 150, Phone B 152, Phone C 154, . . . , Phone N 158. In FIG. 1, Phone A 150 is shown by a solid line as being activated. Note that the various FS (EFS A 170, BFS B 172, MFS C 174, . . . EFS N 178) will generally be different from each other, owing to the different technologies and underlying software in the various corresponding telephones (Phone A 150, Phone B 152, Phone C 154, . . . Phone N 158.)
There are many inconveniences in the system shown in FIG. 1. For example, End User 160 may have to remember and separately utilize the different FS corresponding to the different telephones. This can be a cumbersome activity, but cannot be avoided with the present state of the art. Whenever a new telephone is added or replaces an old or broken telephone, End User 160 must change or learn its FS, which is even more cumbersome. Finally, whenever End User 160 wants to add a new personalized telephone number to an office phone or a home phone (e.g. Phone A 150 or Phone B 152), the End User 160 must recall the various keystrokes needed to activate the corresponding FS for each (e.g. EFS A 170 or BFS B 172). This can be very difficult, particularly for older telephones, where documentation can be misplaced or lost.
In summary, the prior art currently lacks a system and method which would allow End User 160 to access, utilize and globally upgrade EFS for all telephones, including those telephones belonging to End User and those telephones not belonging to the End User which would include nearby conference phones. Further, the prior art currently lacks a system and method which would allow a mobile End User 160 (such as a person walking with his PDA) to access, utilize and globally upgrade all EFS for all the telephones the End User 160 cares about. Finally, the prior art lacks multimedia splitting and redirecting, which would allow the audio portions of multimedia events to be heard at a convenient selected telephone, where video or other streams are directed to different physical devices.